Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what assessment she has made of the adequacy of protection in the Online Safety Bill for people with epilepsy from the purposeful sending of flashing images online.

We are protecting people with epilepsy online through a review of criminal law and the Online Safety Bill.

Following a recommendation by the Law Commission in its review of existing criminal law for harmful communications, we will introduce new offences into law through the Online Safety Bill. This includes the harm-based communications, false communications and threatening communications offences. The harm-based offence will capture epilepsy trolling where it meets the criminal threshold. We are also continuing to consider the remaining recommendations, including a standalone offence for epilepsy trolling.

The Online Safety Bill will require services in scope to have robust systems and processes to tackle illegal content on their services. This includes the harms-based offence and any other illegal online abuse which provokes epilepsy seizures.